This thesis contributes to the advancement of Dedicated Short Range
Communications antenna research for automobile applications. This research is focused on implementing vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications to advance both the safety and the quality of the driving experience of modern motorists.
This thesis achieves three separate goals. First, a brief literature review details the current state of DSRC antenna research and the drawbacks of antenna designs previously presented. Secondly, several common wire antennas are modeled and simulated in order to assess their potential in DSRC communications. Using an industry standard
electromagnetic full-wave simulator, Ansys-HFSS, all of the antenna designs examined are determined to be lacking to some degree. In this way, the need for novel antenna designs in the DSRC frequency band is clearly outlined.
The third goal of this thesis is to present a novel wire antenna design with an omni directional radiation pattern for DSRC communications. The novel design is developed based on several of the fundamental wire antennas analyzed for DSRC, but it is a unique antenna that meets all of the criteria specified in the literature review section. Furthermore, it out performs all the currently available antennas in one way or another. In order to mount the antenna in an automobile, a double-sided feed board is proposed that utilizes a grounded coplanar waveguide to excite the central monopole of the wire antenna array, and a quarter-wave transformer to improve the overall impedance match of the antenna. Vias are then added to the board around the feed line in order to suppress
parallel plate modes within the substrate. Lastly, the feed board is attached with screws to a metallic cavity designed to shield the array from electromagnetic interference from within the vehicle cabin. This increases the robustness of the design in terms of both the structural and signal integrity. The overall antenna system is simulated for operation in the DSRC frequency band. The antenna presented in this thesis is found to fulfill all the necessary criteria for vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and its performance exceeds that of DSRC antennas currently available.